Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Jerry Chen]

Hello,

I would like to consult you about the English language logic.

Are "less expensive" and "cheaper" the same thing?

In this sentence,

The blue car is more expensive than the red one.
Then, which of the following is more acceptable?

1. The red car is less expensive than the blue one.
2. The red car is cheaper than the blue one.

Thanks for responding to my question!

[redset]

They're basically the same thing, yep! "Less expensive" sounds a little more formal, and there are subtle implications too - you might say taking the bus is "less expensive" than owning a car, which implies that owning a car is expensive (and taking the bus costs less). If you say that apples are cheaper than bananas, it doesn't sound like you're implying that bananas are expensive, just that apples cost less. These are very subtle shades of meaning, think of it as advanced English use.

Cheap is also used as an insult - if something doesn't cost much to buy it could be low-quality, so people sometimes say low-quality things are cheap, look cheap etc. (The item might actually have cost a lot of money!) And if a person doesn't like to spend money, like a miser, sometimes people will call them cheap.